Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Tuesday

23 Mar 2021

Steerpike

Stanley Johnson and the Covid loophole

Labour have been taking a cheeky pop at the PM’s father today in the Guardian over new coronavirus regulations coming into force later this month. Under the guidelines from 29 March, people will be allowed to leave the UK to prepare a second home for sale or rent as part of a list of specific ‘reasonable excuses to travel’ outside the country. Andrew Gwynne has dubbed this the ‘Stanley Johnson clause’ in a reference to the latter allegedly breaking Covid guidelines by travelling to his Greek villa to make it ‘Covid-proof.’ In typically partisan style, Gwynne claims that: For hardworking families facing the prospect of missing out on summer holidays, it will stick in

Kristina Murkett

Don’t blame private schools for failing to tackle ‘rape culture’

The allegations levelled against some of Britain’s top private schools have been deeply troubling. Dulwich College turns boys into sexual abusers, one former pupil has claimed. A ‘dossier of rape culture’ has been compiled by ex students at Westminster School; Latymer Upper School has reported sex abuse allegations to the police. These are just a handful of examples: Everyone’s Invited – an online campaign which invites young people to post anonymous testimonies of sexual assault and harassment – has over 4100 testimonies from girls as young as nine. For teachers like me who have taught sex education to 14 and 15 year old boys, these allegations are shocking but perhaps not surprising.

Robert Gore-Langton

What is it with Bristol and rioting?

‘Bristol riots’ has a lengthy section of its own on Wikipedia. In the wake of the ugly scenes that erupted in the city at the weekend, the list of disturbances is now even longer. Police were injured, a few badly. Vans were set alight and the mindless joy of all that breaking glass became infectious — one young woman found time to skateboard during the mayhem as tires burnt, fireworks flew and bobbies bled. The riot is now being described romantically as the ‘the Battle of Bridewell Street’ after the street where the police station sits now daubed in graffiti. But in reality it was vicious. Despite Bristol’s well-heeled student population (said

Kate Andrews

Why did unemployment dip as Covid restrictions tightened?

Slowly but surely, forecasts for unemployment in the UK have been revised downwards. Alongside Rishi Sunak’s Budget earlier this month, the Office for Budget Responsibility significantly changed their prediction for peak unemployment: from the 11.9 per cent predicted in the July forecast down to 6.5 per cent. This was spurred on by an extension of the furlough scheme, a growing economic resilience to lockdowns and, of course, the spectacular rollout of the vaccines (over half the adult population has now been vaccinated with at least one dose). But the latest update from the Office for National Statistics, published today, has provided an early surprise. The headline unemployment figure has fallen slightly again: from 5.1

Steerpike

Army argy bargy in Commons clash

Things got a little heated in the House of Commons last night after defence secretary Ben Wallace gave short shrift to fellow Tory MP and ex Royal Anglian Regiment reservist Lieutenant Mark Francois. All hell broke loose after a war of words over the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget blackhole. Scot’s Guard’s own Captain Wallace pointed out that criticism lobbed from the backbenches about defence procurement would carry a little more weight if the honourable critics had themselves not been former defence ministers overseeing the deficit of which they complained. Lieutenant Francois was particularly aggrieved, demanding corrections to the record and apologies galore. Those Stakhanovite scribes of Hansard have diplomatically recorded

Nick Tyrone

Can Starmer overcome his Hartlepool problem?

Labour have picked their candidate in Hartlepool ahead of the rest of the pack. Unfortunately for them, they have chosen poorly. More than that, the candidate himself and the way he was selected have put Labour’s wider problems clearly on display. For a start, just so we can get it out of the way, the fact that the term ‘Tory MILFs’ was prominent in the news all weekend doesn’t say a lot on its own about a wise candidate selection by Labour. This, in case you missed it, refers to some social media posts Paul Williams was responsible for many years ago that were a little less than politically correct

Steerpike

Now FBPE try to cancel Lionel Barber

It has not been a great nine weeks for the European Union. Readers both inside and outside the supranational bloc will have been horrified at the dithering, disinformation and mixed messages of the commission and its national leaders, now considering an export ban to stop vaccine orders to the UK being honoured. The French position on the Oxford jab for instance has gone from banning it, to allowing it for just those under the age of 65, to allowing it for all, to banning it and now allowing it only for those over 55. Polling now shows 61 per cent of people in that country think the AstraZeneca vaccine is unsafe. It all seems to

James Rogers

In defence of the defence cuts

For many years, the mainstream story of the British armed forces has been one of cuts and decline. More cuts are to come. Even though the army has not been at its target strength for several years, the Defence Command Paper, released on Monday, commits to reducing the British army’s size by an additional 10,000 troops — around 12 per cent of its operational manpower. But does this necessarily matter? Of course it does. Over the past decade, the British armed forces have been underfunded and stretched to meet the tasks afforded to them by the government. Between 2010 and 2015, defence spending continued to fall in real terms until

Monday

22 Mar 2021

Steerpike

Watch: Tory MP slams Beeb’s lack of flags

BBC Director General Tim Davie was grilled today by the Commons public accounts committee and for Tory MP James Wild there was one item top of his agenda: flags. It follows last week’s sniggering incident in which two BBC breakfast presenters appeared to poke fun at Robert Jenrick’s Union Jack. Wild asked Davie: ‘In your own report last year of 268 pages, do you know how many union flags were pictured in any of the graphics?’ to which the BBC man replied: ‘In all the briefings I got for this meeting, that was not one of them’ prompting Wild’s answer: ‘Zero.’ Wild went on: ‘Maybe in the annual report for this year

Alistair Bonnington

The Hamilton report has not vindicated Nicola Sturgeon

Let me first deal with the general confusion. Most Scots think that the Hamilton Report, published today, deals with the question of whether the First Minister misled the Scottish Parliament when she told MSPs that the first time she knew of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Alex Salmond (of which he was acquitted of in a criminal court) was on 2 April 2018. On any view this is hardly a ringing endorsement of Nicola Sturgeon’s reliability It does no such thing. Instead, the report deals with a possible breach of the Ministerial Code by Nicola Sturgeon on the question of whether she ‘failed to feed back’ the terms of

Ross Clark

Is Boris right about a third wave?

Covid deaths fell to 17 on Sunday, the lowest daily figure since 28 September and no higher than the levels being recorded throughout much of last summer. Deaths are down over 40 per cent on the week, hospitalisations down 21 per cent. Yet the better the news on vaccinations and serious illness, the longer the road seems to be out of lockdown. The latest potential roadblock seems to be the threat of a third wave in Europe. The Prime Minister said this lunchtime: ‘On the Continent right now, you can see, sadly, there is a third wave under way. And people in this country should be under no illusions that… when a

Henry Hill

The shine has finally come off the SNP

This week is still going to be a bad one for Nicola Sturgeon. But it seems probable that we won’t know just how bad until May, after the Hamilton inquiry today found that she did not break the ministerial code. By aggressively stonewalling two inquiries, the First Minister has managed to forestall calls for her resignation by casting herself on the mercy of the electorate, which still looks set to return the Scottish National Party in the May elections. Attention has mostly concentrated on how Sturgeon and her ministers have obstructed the Holyrood inquiry. But as pro-Union legal blogger Ian Smart has set out, there were huge and unnecessary delays

Steerpike

Watch: Theresa May roasts Gavin Williamson

While the rest of SW1 was distracted this afternoon by the findings of the Hamilton report, Mr S tuned in to see Theresa May appear before the National Security Strategy Committee. The former PM remains the master of the withering putdown, as poor Gavin Williamson will have discovered to his cost on watching the meeting back. Former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett inquired as to how Williamson’s alleged leaking (and subsequent sacking) impacted meetings of the National Security Council and May did not hold back. May replied: ‘I think we then got back into the rhythm of people recognising that they could speak as freely as they had done previously.’ Good to

Fraser Nelson

Hamilton Report clears Sturgeon on all four counts – but with redactions

Nicola Sturgeon did not break the ministerial code over the Alex Salmond affair. This is the verdict of James Hamilton QC after his inquiry, with a 61-page report that clears her on all four charges. She got things wrong in her account to parliament, Hamilton said, by giving an ‘incomplete narrative of events.’ But this was a ‘genuine failure of recollection’ and not deliberate. On the four points he was asked to look into (many of the questions facing her are outside Hamilton’s brief) he has given as strong an exoneration as she could have hoped for. And did she mislead parliament? He ducks this question. “It is for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether they were

Rakib Ehsan

The Bristol riots show the danger of ignoring anti-police extremism

The ugly scenes in Bristol last night make it plain to see that Britain can no longer turn a blind eye to a particular brand of political disorder. Violent clashes during the city’s ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstration – supposedly in protest against the Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill – resulted in 20 police officers being injured, burned-out police vans, and a police station being attacked. Two officers who were seriously injured suffered from broken ribs, a broken arm and a punctured lung. So who was to blame for this violence? The chairman of Avon and Somerset Police Federation, Andy Roebuck, labelled last night’s anarchy a form of ‘unprecedented violence’. And the city’s mayor, Marvin

Isabel Hardman

Is the ‘levelling up’ agenda going anywhere?

Is ‘levelling up’ actually going to amount to anything? It’s been well over a year since Boris Johnson talked about it on the steps of Downing Street following his election victory, but of course quite a lot has happened in the intervening few months. It would be perfectly easy for this agenda to end up like David Cameron’s Big Society: with noble aims, a catchy (if also meaningless) tag line – and not much to show for it at the end. It’s fair to say that many MPs feared this too, which is one of the reasons the Northern Research Group was set up, in order to keep up pressure

Cindy Yu

How will Boris respond to the EU’s vaccine threats?

10 min listen

Overnight the European Commission’s rhetoric on vaccine export bans hotted up. In the run up to Thursday’s meeting between European leaders to discuss its vaccines options, what will the UK government do? Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls about Boris’s options.

Steerpike

Watch: Labour MP refuses to condemn Bristol violence

Oh dear. Appearing on BBC Two’s Politics Live this afternoon, Labour left winger Nadia Whittome refused to condemn the violent protesters in Bristol last night that left 20 policeman injured including two in a serious condition. Despite being asked four times by presenter Jo Coburn, Whittome would only say ‘I’m not going to get into condemning protesters when we don’t know what’s happened yet. We need a full investigation into what has happened.’ It is worth noting that all four of Bristol’s Labour MPs and the city’s Labour mayor Marvin Rees have already criticised the actions of the protesters, with Rees claiming it was ‘selfish, self-indulgent, self-centred violence.’ Given that Whittome’s

Roger Mosey

Tim Davie’s BBC ‘transformation’ doesn’t go far enough

I’m sorry to say that I was a Salford refusenik. When the BBC first got the itch, almost 20 years ago, to send its London-based staff to new locations around the country, as a senior executive at the time I thought the idea was a grisly one. That’s not because I don’t like the north of England: I come from Bradford. But as director of sport I was being asked to put my staff and their families onto buses making a one-way trip to the Greater Manchester docklands – leaving behind the power centres of the BBC and the lifestyle of a capital city. I wrote grumpy emails to the

Robin Aitken

Was this the BBC’s ‘Emily Thornberry’ moment?

Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty’s mocking of Robert Jenrick’s flag was unintentionally revealing of the BBC’s problems. It also made it clear that Tim Davie’s decision to shift hundreds of jobs outside London won’t solve the corporation’s quest for diversity. What instantly came to mind watching this interchange was another telling incident nearly seven years ago now, during the Rochester and Strood by-election. Ed Miliband had sent the Islington battlecruiser Emily Thornberry out on manoeuvres on the touchingly misplaced assumption that she would ‘bring out the vote’. She did, but not in the way intended. While touring the constituency, Thornberry snapped a picture of a modest house, festooned with large